Echo
by Guardinthena
Summary: Waking up after a Spacebridge accident, Phage discovers that she's been thrust backwards into Cybertron's past. Faced with the complication that nobody is coming after her, Phage must accept the grim realization that she must avoid and survive the upcoming war on Cybertron alone or else risk causing devastating ripples through time.
1. Chapter 1, Phage has Terminated

**Authors Note:** In the time line of this universe, the events in 'Echo' takes place roughly two-and-a-half years after the events in 'The Golden Hour.' Optimus Prime and Phage share spark bond that was acquired after Phage temporarily stored Prime's spark inside herself to save his life. The resonated link caused a shift in their relationship that neither is fully certain what to do with it.

Autobot Language: Uto – help. Alax – stop, desist, or halt

**CHAPTER 1**

**Phage felt she had been plunged into a pool of concentrated acid after rematerializing from a botched Spacebridge Jump**.

She gave vocalization as she materialized to a long continuous shrill-pitched scream. The vocation of her cosmic pain was so unearthly that others would have been inclined to believe the noise originated from the Spacebridge itself as it manifested and violently tore a hole in the fabric of time and space.

Brutally forced back into a gravity-subjective form from what had once been scattered bits of hyperactive atoms and bent beams of light, Phage found that every atom of her being had come alive–_screaming_–as she was blown clear of Ground Zero. The kinetic force of the skewed Jump shot her off like a snapped rubber band and sent her bouncing off the planet's hard surroundings ragdoll style. She skipped several times off jagged surfaces until she lost momentum and found herself in one long audio-cringing scrap across the metallic floor before ending in an undignified heap one-hundred-twenty-six-point-one yards away from Ground Zero.

Thin trails of wispy smoke twisted up from her smoldering corpse where by occasion of torched nerve endings her body was given to fits of compulsory spasms. The imagery was not unlike the final jerky throes of a fly sprawled on its back with its various legs kicking off at erratic intervals. Lost amidst the rubble and broken charred debris of the alien landscape, Phage was at that very moment like the fly.

A million and one terrifying thoughts raced through her CPU at the speed of a fraction of a second. The first and foremost horrifying reflection she allowed herself to give rise to: was she horribly disfigured? Was she even recognizable? Had she made a horrendous mistake when she attempted to phase through the damaged Spacebridge's interior walls to escape the impending Jump? Had that already tricky combination of events left her with half a body or as a bubbling pile of slag? Were these her last sentient thoughts before she passed into madness from sheer pain or slipped into the fine veil of death?

Growing frantic with the unknown, and with no small amount of willpower, she willed what should have been her arms to move. The strength alone to do just that was terrible. Her joints wailed in resistance, her sensory nodes flaring alive with a white pain that gave the femme cause to cry out. Error messages and cautionary warnings spammed her internal database.

The pitiful cries of pain trickled into anger as she purposefully ignored all internal systems damage reports.

Lying there for a time, Phage took in short frantic breaths as she persisted in her endeavor to view her charred corpse. It was only with a dogged perseverance she managed the strength.

What was her arms trembled violently, and to lift her head was like trying to lift a steel ton block using only her neck cables…

A small part of her cautioned that the sight might drive her mad–and then she realized she could not see.

Phage felt her spark contract, and a jolt of adrenaline flush her systems. At the very at-hand threat of finding herself blind, bodily damaged, and in a complete unknown environment that assuredly possessed some form of threat to her, Phage found herself not unreasonably struggling with sudden impending fear. With a great intake of air, she prepared to hyperventilate –then realized quite abruptly that her optics were only closed.

Muscle tension and stress levels dropped only marginally as she batted her optics open, attempting to adjust to the dim lightning around her only to find her vision blurred and her right optic cracked. After batting her optics a number of times in the hopes of her vision adjusting, and gaining no improvement, Phage reluctantly pulled up a damage report that revealed that her blurred vision was due to heat damage to the crystal lens.

'_Wonderful_.' She thought sarcastically, marveling that her dry humor was still intact and how utterly useless it was in this situation.

Releasing her abated breath she had been unaware of withholding until an internal warning threatened overheating shut down, Phage attempted to claim her center of calm, and press on with the absolute need to see the state of her body. Summoning the strength she needed to lift her arms and head once again, she attempted to regulate her breathing, a moan of pain slipping out unbidden here and there, and attempted to gather about her mental self the remains of her battered walls to bare against the pain she knew would strike should she move…

Once again biting back the notion that the sight of her could plunge her off the deep end, Phage cycled in a deep breath, tightened her core, and lifted.

The searing white hot pain was immediate, absolute, and uncompromising. A scream slipped past her lips even as she acquired at last the visual confirmation of the state of what should have been her arms...

Her scream near transformed into inane laughter when she saw that she was staring at two fine arms damaged in only that her delicate fingers had melted together or fused at the fine delicate joints. As her body and stretched willpower would allow, Phage came to gradually oversee the rest of her state of being and found that, despite other places where her metal body had melted or fused together, she was whole. She still had two arms, two legs, a head, neck, torso and everything else in-between that she could possibly desire as a bipedal being. Despite her desperate half-melted state, she preferred that compared to the alternative.

At last, Phage laid herself prone across the cold, unforgiving ground of the foreign environment, finding that she could breathe a little easier.

She was alive!

It was, of all things, a start.

For an excruciating period of indeterminable time that seemed to stretch on and on and on and on, Phage attempted to wade through the pain searing through every fiber of her body. By initializing her ability for compartmentalization, Phage attempted to bury herself away from her condition by reciting a particular mantra over and over again within her CPU:

_The pain is not mine. It is someone else's. Displace. The pain is not mine. It is someone else's. Displace…_

As Phage well knew and feared, mind tricks only went so far. She could not hide herself away completely from the present, and found herself torn again and again from her mental hidey-hole whenever a fresh stab of pain would lance through her system, dancing over her sensory nodes like an electrical short. Alone as far as she could tell, she permitted herself to show signs of distress through typical vocal projections of a series of whimpers, pangs, and cries. When her condition persisted, it is not to say that she eventually gave up on her mental bracing, but rather attempted to delve much deeper into it.

The whole time she kept telling herself to hold on a while longer…

…_Five seconds more…ten seconds…three seconds more…twenty…_

_Endure the pain just a little while longer, what's five more seconds when the Autobots will show up soon? Ratchet will be with them! And he'll give you the good stuff. You know, that fine, beautiful, lovely injection that will dull the pain and loosen the muscles. Medicine that, hopefully, will be so strong as to send you into a blissful recharge so that when we wake up in the Medibay later, you'll think this had all been nothing but a horrible nightmare._

_Just go deeper. Displace._

Phage hissed at a sudden pang.

_FIVE MORE SECONDS! THREE MORE SECONDS AND THEY'LL MATERALIZE AFTER YOU. RATCHET WILL BE WITH THEM! Ratchet will be with them! Ratchet!Ratchet!Ratchet!Ratchet!Ratchet!_

_Three more seconds…_

Unsure of when she had begun biting back on her screams, Phage became aware that she had begun doing so when she tasted the offensive tang of her lifeblood on her tongue. Phage spat it out, and in doing so snapped a bit of skin on her lips that had fused together.

Of all things, that was the final proverbial straw.

At wits end with the pain, the femme rolled onto her side, suffering further protest and blossoms of bright red and white pain across her vision and throughout her body. She screamed:

"RATCHET! DEAR GOD, RATCHET! HELP–! UTO! UTO!"

Her words broke into blubbering cries of pain and solvent tears. At some point, she mercilessly cycled down.

* * *

Whooping and taunting, Cliffjumper and the Autobot flyers shot after the retreating specks of the Decepticons as they fled the battlefield. Cliffjumper chased after them on foot while the Aerialbots and Powerglide followed only a short distance before breaking off and circling back around. Cliffjumper had to get pinged by Prowl to break off and return.

The red minibot was sulky for the rest of the day.

From in and around the surrounding ravine where the battle had taken place, the battle-scarred Autobots regrouped around Optimus Prime, who stood nearby the ruined Decepticon Spacebridge at the bottom of the ravine. Jazz slide down the ravine wall of loosely clumped earth and stone; showering dirt and pebbles on anybody below and receiving general disgruntled moaning as his fellow Autobots scattered. He landed with a bounce six yards from Optimus Prime. As the rest of the Autobots regrouped, Jazz noted the Terrible Twins, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, exchange a victorious high-five, the minibots chatting away amiably, and Ratchet quickly zigzagging amongst the troops, taking a head-count and noting that nobody had taken any wounds that were life-threatening.

From the gathering mass, Prowl's voice could be heard as he called for a sound off.

"Aerialbots: Silverbolt, Skydive, Fireflight, Slingshot, Air Raid!"

All five resounded at once as if they were quintuplets, "Here!"

"Powerglide!"

"Here!"

"Cliffjumper!"

"Here and ready for more Decepticon ass-kicking!"

Prowl rolled his optics and continued on.

A Cheshire-Cat grin split Jazz's flexi-metal face as he turned to Prime.

"Now this is what I would call a resounding victory! Am I right, Prime?"

Cloaked in heavy shadows cast off by the towering ravine as the sun set, Optimus's bulky backside remained adamantly facing him. Unused to the blatant disregard, Jazz came up short.

Sensing something was horribly amiss, Jazz's audio-splitting grin slipped from his face. With an air of cautionary note, Jazz probed with fumbling eloquence: "Um…Prime?"

"Sunstreaker and Sideswipe!"

"Here!" boomed the twins as one.

"Mirage?"

"Accountable!"

"Jazz!"

"Here," reported the sabotage with less than a lackluster tone so faint, that Prowl had to call his name again.

"Jazz!"

The 'Bot in question tossed a sidelong glance at Prowl, but never truly took his gaze off Prime. Annoyed, he returned with more gusto; "Here!"

"Phage!"

Absolute silence was met by Prowl's call and with it, a sudden wave of restlessness descended on the gathered strike force.

One of Prowl's eyebrows quirked up. From atop the boulder where he took note, he scanned the crowd and called again, "Phage, report!"

Again, the returning silence was deafening. The Autobots began to fidget and look around, low whispers rising on the wind and reaching Jazz's audios: 'Where is she?' 'I saw her earlier in the fight…' 'She's probably trailing behind somewhere.' 'Wasn't she with you last?'

Prowl's lip components pressed together into a fine, unamused line. "Mirage! Bluestreak! Phage was assigned to your unit! Where is she?"

Mirage offered Prowl an apologetic shrug. "I lost sight of her when Starscream and the Seekers flushed us out from our sniper position."

Prowl's optics turned hard on Bluestreak next, who fidgeted uncomfortably. "Well, from the start of the fight I was with her up until we got flushed out. However, after I claimed another position I did catch sight of her in the thick of the fight. I observed that she was engaged with Rumble, Frenzy, and Ravage, so I know she didn't get buried under any rock. I remember thinking to myself at the time how Phage reminded me of one of those old Earth Amazon warrior-women and Rumble and Frenzy were like those weird like mini-humans from Easter Island –what did they call them again? Humans have a name for it…pygmies! That's it! Pygmies! Oh! Wait, but I forgot, I mean, I only thought Phage reminded me of an Amazon warrior not because she's built like one but because I had seen this History channel coverage on them about a week ago, and Phage was engaging them with her spear by the way, and you know how scary that femme gets in battle. I mean she's so sweet and reserved at _The Ark_, but as soon as a battle starts up she transforms into this she-devil and…actually, it's a lot like that Earth novel with that human doctor-scientist guy that has a good side and then he transforms into this evil man–"

"Never mind!" Prowl snapped, his patience at roads end with the Blue Lightening.

From the corner of his optic, Jazz saw Prowl grow impatient and jump on his , but his full attention was focused on Optimus Prime. If Jazz had not been fine tuned to Prime's subtle body language from working with and fighting beside him for over nine million years, Jazz would have missed the tremor that shook the whole of his body.

"Optimus!"

The heads of the entirety of the Autobot strike force turned as one, optics locking with unfaltering interest on Prime and Jazz. But Jazz's alarmed tone brought down the full attention of a more terrifying critic–Ratchet.

With the conviction of a nurse-bot in full care-mode, Ratchet burst his way through the Autobot ranks by shoving them aside, fully aware that he could only cause at most a few scrapes or dents and truly and utterly not giving a damn about it.

"What's the matter over here?"

When Optimus did not turn around, Ratchet's steely optics fixated on Jazz, who shook his head, indicating that he did not know. Ratchet's attention focused back on Prime – and he zeroed in with all the business of a hawk on a hunt.

"Optimus, you and Megatron had quite the scrap." as he approached, Optimus remained as he had been since the Decepticons had fled–facing the Spacebridge, as immovable and resolute as an iron-caste statue. Like Jazz, Ratchet slowed, growing concerned at Prime's dissociation with his surroundings. He tried again, "I have not checked off on your operational status yet."

Something in that framework of words triggered a response from Prime. The battle-busted Autobot Leader exhaled nosily as he lifted a hand and placed it firmly on the wall of the Spacebridge. If not for the wind that kicked up just then, sending particles of dirt and minute stone through the air that prattled against the their metallic hides and the damaged Spacebridge, whining like a pitiful Earth child as if upset with the their disruption in its path, Ratchet would have thought that Prime's sigh had been an attempt to disguise a painful whine.

Ratchet was of a mind to think the noise was just the wind, or the groan of a strained servo, until he noted Prime's uncharacteristically drooping shoulder struts.

Suddenly, Optimus Prime's distinctive baritone vocals rose above the mournful strains of the wind and the stressed servos and gears of the battle-busted Autobot's gathered about to announce with an air of grim finality:

"…operational status: terminated."

Optics settling into troubled slits, Ratchet rushed forward and grabbed Prime by his right shoulder strut and whipped him around.

Damage from his brawl with Megatron was immediately evident. The Decepticon leader had taken it to Prime hard–both glass panels were busted out. His left antenna had been ripped off, exposing a series of delicate multicolored wires that, Ratchet was all too aware, were connected back into his CPU. A trickle of his lifeblood, now dried, stained that side of his face. His grill was concaved in the approximate shape and size of several of Megatron's fists, until bits of the metal had broken off or pierced through into his internal workings. Fluorescent lifeblood spilled by delicate streams from the grievous wound. Disregarding signs of laser fire and bullets lodged firmly into his metal frame, his midriff and the missing antenna were points of serious concern for Ratchet; and he stated as much.

Attempting a lopsided smile that did not reach to his optics, the CMO reported; "I've seen you in worst condition before, Prime. Although I will require you to report into Medibay for repair, your injuries are hardly cause for termination unless you go unrepaired."

Standing in his long shadow, Ratchet could now plainly see that Prime was slouching. Partly, he suspected, due to the wound he sustained at his waist, where he kept his right hand over. But Ratchet's attention focused onto Prime's optics –which were dark and unfocused.

Ratchet shook his shoulder, trying to claim his attention. "Optimus! Optimus!"

Languidly, the pinpoints of cerulean light that were Prime's usual shade trained onto Ratchet for the first time. The CMO took Prime by both his shoulder struts and slowly said, "What…is…wrong?"

"I can't Sense her."

Ratchet took a moment to process the words. Once they sank in, the words struck him like a gravity hammer. Visibly shaken, Ratchet backed up one step, his hands dropping to his sides. The shock muted the Chief Medical Officer only temporarily. As it wore off, he shook his head violently, closing his optics firmly before opening them again. When he spoke, he punctuated each word with a hard underlying tone.

"What. Do. You. _**Mean**__– _You_ can't _Sense her?" Ratchet's voice dropped to a hiss as he recovered two steps, bringing himself up underneath Prime's chin. "You're resonated with her like you are with Roller! Or like Jazz is with Prowl! Or Sideswipe and Sunstreaker! You cannot Sense her unless–"

The words caught in Ratchet's vocal processor.

Optimus hung his head, his shoulder struts drooping further.

"Primus." Ratchet breathed, horrified. "The two of you share a Level Three Resonation, nearly as strong as the Twins. You must have felt…Primus." Ratchet attempted to ask, "You didn't feel… Did you–?"

Darkened, hollowed optics met Ratchet's own bright ones. Listlessly, he rocked his head back and forth with three heavy nods.

For his credit, Ratchet's white face paled while the flexi-plate skin molding his facial features contorted into a sickened grimace. It took the Chief Medical Officer a span to formulate a reply as the reality of the situation sank in. And then he remembered:

"During the battle, when the Spacebridge activated, you screamed." Ratchet's optics shot up to Prime's. "But that wasn't you –was it? Not really."

For his effort, Optimus attempted to formulate a reply. It took him near a full minute.

"It was Phage. Through the bond, I felt her pain. And then–nothing." Optimus shook his head as if trying to clear it of a fog and quickly corrected himself. "No, not just nothing. I thought the pain was excoriating but what came next was absolute nothingness…

"…She was in the Spacebridge when it activated." His heavy optics sought Ratchet's. "Phage has terminated, Ratchet."

Ratchet struggled to digest the information. His thought processes kept cycling back around to Wheeljack and himself and the Level One Resonation bond that they shared betwixt themselves –a bond forged millions of years ago during Cybertron, when both Autobots and Decepticons were attempting to develop combiner teams. The engineer 'bots kept having problems with the volunteers rejecting each other after undergoing the reconstruction process to enable combining–much like a rejection of a new transformation cog or laser core. It had been Ratchet who had suggested to the top Autobot heads that, theoretically speaking, a combiner team could work if they could find 'bots with a spark composition of a similar charge. Unfortunately, Ratchet had been correct. However, his theory did not include a solution or the personality meld rejection. Despite that which was, quite frankly, out of his field of research, the higher brass began a wide ranging search through all of their ranks for volunteers with spark compositions of a similar charge for the combiner process. As it turned out, Wheeljack and he had a similar spark charge. Luckily, Ratchet felt, Ratchet's own spark was too weak to maintain a combined charge with Wheeljack's that was sufficient enough to maintain an effective combined form for any length of time. Lab results had revealed that long before either of them underwent the combiner reconstruction process, and yet whether it was a fluke of working beside Wheeljack for so long or the lab results that were run so long ago to determine their spark compatibility – their sparks had forged a Level One Resonation bond, which had resulted in either of them occasionally receiving what Ratchet fondly called emotional 'ghost messages.' Nothing that was of a permanent happenstance, as Ratchet had heard happened with other 'bots, but strong enough to where it still took him by surprise whenever it would happen. Mostly, when Wheeljack had gone and gotten himself blown up after one of his invention failures.

Recalling the shock and trauma that he would receive after being bowled over by any one of Wheeljack's accidents sent the CMO's mind reeling as he attempted to comprehend what Prime was going through right now. The weak bond between Wheeljack and him in no way compared to the Level Three bond that Prime had shared with Phage, or even the unheard of Level Four bond that the twins shared –Sunstreaker and Sideswipe being the only two 'bots in known medical history with that kind of connection. As he understood it, having a Level Three bond granted a near omnipresent emotional and mental awareness of each partner.

Ratchet's CPU staggered at the notion. Optimus had sensed Phage's death, her final thoughts–if there had been any–as if they had been his very own.

Ratchet dragged his hands over his face and muttered once more in a hollow tone, "Primus." Remembering Prime, the CMO's crimson hands fell heavily on both of Prime's shoulder struts. Smaller than Prime, he was able to force the mech to look him in the optics.

"Optimus," said Ratchet gently, "you're in shock, but right now we need to get you and the rest of the Autobots back to _The Ark. _Optimus, can you hear me?"

Prime remained listless, his optics dark and trained on a dangerous event horizon. Ratchet snapped a look off over his shoulder strut to Prowl. With a single message over their internal communications, told the undeclared second-in-command that he needed to take over and now.

Prowl seized on it instantaneously.

"Autobots!" rapt out Prowl, "transform and roll out!"

Some general confusion rose among the strike team who had not been standing close enough to Ratchet and Prime to overhear the grim discussion. Silverbolt was the one to voice their collective concern:

"But Phage is still missing. With permission, I'll take the Aerialbots and scout over the landscape for her."

Prowl cut the air with a deft chop of his hand, signaling the 'negative.' "Unnecessary. Return to base."

The Autobots looked from Prowl to each other as if he'd gone mad, though a number of them began to show signs that they understood what the conversation between Prime and Ratchet had been, and what Prowl was now suggesting.

"But–" Silverbolt began to protest.

"She's terminated." Came the abrupt announcement, loud and hollow. All optics jumped to Jazz, who stood motionless, his visor dull and lifeless. "Lil' Katt–_Phage_," he corrected himself, the name he'd given to Phage around the time that he had unofficially adopted the femme as his little sister stinging on its way up through his vocal processor. His gritted his teeth, as if biting back on the taste of it; "terminated at the time of the Spacebridge jump, attempting to sabotage the Decepticon drone within."

If morale was a gaseous element that could be sucked from a vicinity, than that was surely what had just transpired among the ranks.

Feeling rather numb himself, Ratchet took Prime by the shoulder strut and steered him towards the rest of the Autobots. "We should get back to _The Ark_."

Nobody moved right away. Whether rooted in their places by shock or taking a moment of peace, the end effect was the same…

Nearly two-dozen pairs of weary cerulean optics focused on the decimated Spacebridge as if their hard stares could condemn it to the lowest depths of the Pitt.


	2. Chapter 2, Ghosts and Shadows

**Authors Note: **To clear up any confusion of events, the Autobots and Decepticons are still stuck on Earth and have no idea where or even if Cybertron still exists. Arcee exists in this canon as explained in the comic 'Prime's Rib,' where human feminists demanded that Cybertronians have equal gender rights. To appease them, Optimus Prime had Arcee created. Unlike the cartoon series, the Aerialbots, Stunticons, Combaticons, and Dinobots were all created on Earth using the Matrix.

* * *

**CHAPTER 2**

**Phage was going to kill them. Every. Last. One.**

"Okay–" she mentioned with an air of aloofness to the shifting shadows all around. "Maybe '_kill'_ is a strong word. …_Unless_– you take it out of context and subject the word's definition to a wholly malleable state, in which case 'kill' would mean that I fully intend to subject every last one of those _**fraggin'**_ _mechs_ to a series of specifically tailored debilitating pranks, that I will fully proceed to blame squarely on the shoulders of the twins." She noisily cycled the icy air through her systems and continued; her voice suddenly leveled and quite calmly concluded, "I only think that's fair."

Phage paused in her tirade, more for her own theatric benefit than anything else. Not because she was crazy enough to seriously expect a reply–because she didn't and wasn't. She was only quirky and found, like all misunderstood creative geniuses, that the only good conversation was often your own. "I mean, _come on!_ It's been a week! One whole fraggin' frikkin' _week_! I think that I deserve a 'Get out of the Brig Free Card' for what I plan to do to them because _this_–Is. Fraggin'. _Ridiculous_! Ow–!"

All pretense of anger gone, Phage's tough-girl persona evaporated as instantaneously as her circuitry made the critical synapses to inform her CPU that she'd just sliced herself with the laser scalpel. She emitted a whine that was wholly girlish in its pitch, completely destroying her own mental image of battle-angel vengeance and revealing her for what she was–all bluster and talk.

Hastily, she pulled the laser scalpel away from her knee joint and gently probed under the knee guard for sliced wires and leaking hoses. Three seconds had not even passed before she was yanking her fingers out and biting back on a shout. Air rushed between her clenched teeth with a resounding hiss as she bent over her knee and cradled it.

"Shiiieeeee–woozier!" She tossed her head back, let loose with a long rush of air and laughed. "Gawhahaha-ed! That's smart!"

She checked her fingers and groaned. Lifeblood tainted her mangled fingers. "Great." She said with a roll of her optics. "Just great. Ratchet will have my head over such a stupid mistake."

From subspace Phage withdrew her toolkit and set about withdrawing the necessary wrenches to remove the knee guard and inspect the damage to the circuitry and gears underneath. It was at times like this that she was absolutely grateful that Prime had ignored her complaints that she did not want to be tutored under Ratchet for medical training, and that she was more at ease with wrecking mechs and blowing stuff apart. That is not to say that she did not eventually get what she wanted, but that she was grateful for the insight all the same.

Since waking from her pain-induced stasis, she had set about subjecting herself to a series of rather tricky and in hindsight–as she was sure Ratchet would say when he finally showed up–stupid field repairs, especially when she was half-blind and had to get within an inch of the thing to see clearly the problem at hand. Pain notwithstanding in everything she did, Phage had summoned her medikit from subspace and managed to pry the damned box open after getting it between her legs and snapping the latches off with her immobile fingers. Activating the laser scalpel had not been so hard…although getting the potential death-dealing weapon between her teeth to then use to sever the melted metal of her fingers so she could use them was a whole new skill tier of patience and sure-handed…sure-teethedness entirely. Especially when considering, that with one wrong slip of the scalpel could mean that she could remove a finger, or sever a main fuel-line. Her relief was instanteous when she had freed enough of her fingers to hold the laser scalpel effectively.

She had spent the following days cautiously freeing melded joints, soldering cracks and repairing leaky fuse lines with bandages and electrical tape. Phage was certain once she had completed the bulk of the repairs that she must have looked like some crazy doctor's hack-sawed experiment. The thought was not comforting in the least.

All in all, between her own careful repairs, time spent compartmentalizing–or Shifting, as she sometimes called it–to minimize the incessant pain, and recharging when she became too mentally exhausted to endure the ever encompassing pain any longer, she had seen a week inch by at an excoriating pace. A week spent waiting patiently, of obediently obeying the rules of survival and sticking to one place until she was found...one week of carefully conserving her supplies of limited energon. And within that one week, she had slowly but surely consumed her emergency supplies until she was down to only a day or two worth's left if she seriously stretched it out.

At her core, Phage was a realist; and despite whatever Prowl had to say about her mad mannerism, she was paradoxically quite logical in her chaotic sort of way. Case in point, she was not so delusional to conclude that the Autobots would come if she just continued to sit around awhile longer and wait, like a good little femme. In fact, she would have slapped any other femme upside the head if they had suggested so much and probably shook them for good measure –merely in an exercise attempt to see if she could knock any sense into their empty heads. Then again, she would have done that with a mech as well.

Realistically, if she persisted in the now-proven illogical notion that rescue was still coming than she would have to concede to stasis-lock; and for Phage, that was just no good. The idea of the Autobots finally showing up only to find her in stasis-lock at the foot of the alien Spacebridge not only sounded like defeat, but also pitiful.

Mostly pitiful.

It just rubbed against the grain of her being all sorts of wrong.

Granted, it would have been acceptable in her book should she had been spewed out and immediately crashed into stasis-lock, but she hadn't and wasn't going to unless she allowed it. Possessing a fighting spirit that had only been reinforced by the resonated bond that she shared with Prime, stasis-lock now was just disgraceful and she'd do everything in her power to avoid it.

Sitting around any longer was not going to help her. Her repairs were good for temporary use, not long term. She desperately needed Ratchet. And energon. Ergo, the only remaining road available to her was to explore her surroundings outside of her immediate vicinity and hope that whatever planet that she had ended up on had friendly, sentient life and a functioning energon converter.

Was it asking too much of the universe after rudely being sling-shot through the universe to an unknown planet specifically sought out by the Decepticons that the native inhabitants –if there _were_ any- were friendly? Or that they had a functioning energon converter?

'_Yes.' _intoned her inner voice._ 'Yes it was.'_

Phage rubbed at the bridge between her olfactory. She felt the dull ache of a cranial surge coming on. Some days, it was difficult being as clever as she was. There was no lying to herself.

_'Expect the worst, so you're never disappointed but always pleasantly surprised.'_

"Yeah, yeah…that line works great for new movies, but not very affective on a 'live thy life' perspective. Gets kinda boring after a while." She thought about it a moment then added, "And creates melancholy. Like I need _anymore_ of that."

She fell into silence as she concentrated on repairs.

After seeing to her damaged fuse line with some sealant and electrical tape, Phage replaced her knee guard and took stock of her surroundings.

Except for an ever growing layer of dust, nothing had changed in her surrounding environment over the last week. When she had first woken, she had deduced that she was on an alien world through initial –somewhat corrupted – data collected from her exterior scanners, although the big giveaway had been the two moons in the night sky. She could not give a formal description of the satellites for lack of eyesight, but the two luminescent lights that hung heavy against the backdrop of a star-specked night sky was rather obvious. She was just glad that the planet had a breathable atmosphere, because her auxiliary air intakes were fused from the Jump and that was something she simply could not repair without a proper Medibay and professional medical assistance.

As it stood, she was also aware that she was underground somewhere far and somewhere deep. Moon and daylight filtered through her underground prison one and the same, via a skylight crisscrossed with debris of some sort, whether pipes or roots she could specify, but it broke both forms of light apart into alternating shafts that provided for her only form of illumination in the pit. Neither sun nor moonlight was sufficient enough to make out the dimensions of place, for all illumination was ultimately consumed by the deep darkness that waited for her hungrily between those hours when sun set and before the moons crossed overhead. Between that span of time she was eaten alive by a coldness she was unaware darkness could hold and alleviated only in the slightest by the glow of the two moons. Daylight was both a blessing and a curse, as the sun of this solar system was brutal. Whether it was that the planet's orbit was closer to the sun, or that the sun itself burned brighter than her home star she did not know, but when she found herself caught in one of the shafts of daylight, her core temperature rose to dangerous levels while she was almost positive she thought she smelt the chemicals of her paintjob bubbling and burning. Needless to say, she often sought sanctuary in the embrace of the cool shade.

Sometime around day three, she had freed up enough of the joints in her legs to the ability to crawl. Attempts to stand were met with pain and clumsy falls. She learned quickly that if she desired to travel she had to learn as a baby must. And she did. It took _time_, more than she cared, but she managed to crawl the distance back to the general direction she had been shot out in the hopes of finding the Decepticon Spacebridge she had been grossly regurgitated from…

What she found instead, wasn't exactly what she had been expecting. It did fully explain why she had been thrown horizontally, rather than vertically from Ground Zero.

What she presumed to be in the exact center of the cavernous room there heavily sat an archaic device that she had gingerly identified as an alien Spacebridge. Through her limited vision she could make out that this Spacebridge was triangular in shape and towered near as high as Omega Supreme himself. She had been of some high hopes that she could manipulate the controls of the Spacebridge to send her back and found that she had to scale a ramped dais to reach its base where she hoped she would find some controls. She felt it took an unnatural amount of time to reach the foot of its shadow, and only realized once she put her hands on it why…

Although she did not know it at the time, the energy burst from the alien Spacebridge had caused the billions years worth of dust to explode from its surface, electrified by temporal energies that had not invaded that place for time out of Transformer mind. So as her hands brushed over the metal frame, seeking buttons or levers, she did not disturb layers of dust, only watched in mild interest as her brushstrokes were trailed by streams of dancing electrical energies. Her fingertips brushed over alien runes she could not identify as either Autobot or Decepticon in structure, and whose configuration was far beyond the reaches of even her creative perception of mind to begin to comprehend. Rather, the very feel of the shape of the symbols seemed to lash at her consciousness, violating and abusing it at the mere attempt to formulate a shape of its pattern within her mind's eye.

No sooner had she put her hands to the ominously quiet machine than she wretched them away and fell aside as if thrown by a malevolent force. It was only as she hit the metal dais that she realized no sound pervaded the air around machine's base. She could not stop her optics from wandering up, and though she could barely see, she sensed more than saw the structure was hushed and loomed over her with an ominous presence.

Phage's breathing had hitched as she felt long icy fingers dig into her gut and churn her systems. She wanted to scream. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to run and couldn't. An unreasonable panic seized upon her the longer she remained lost in the device's shadow. The femme, barely able to breathe and forced to crawl as fast as she could, fled the shadow of the device, enduring the pain of a temporal-spacial charged body to do so.

Phage retreated from the structure, her spark brimming with an unnamed fear and foreboding. She did not go near it again.

In the passing days, she had no peace of mind, constantly aware that the device rested a stone's throw from her at all times. Worst yet, she had the most horrid notion that this place was in fact the grave of the dread machine. She had taken stock of the profound silence that pervaded the place after that, and perhaps that was why, more than anything, she had taken to talking to herself –to ward off that vile notion that she was in the presence of something of great malevolence, or a location of which something of great calamity had taken place and which –even billions of years later, still stained the very metal floors and walls. The animalistic paranoia of the place grew so fierce, that at times while she clung to the folds between recharge and consciousness, she thought she could hear the shadows whispering…

The sane portion of her CPU rebelled violently against the very notion, and Phage fell into her second-hand nature of Shifting. Before she'd slip into recharge each night, she'd forgotten the slip of sanity and written it off as an exhausted mind playing tricks on her.

Phage desperately wanted the Autobots to arrive to extract her from this horrible place. At the same time, she was absolutely glad that the Autobots had not come for her, because it would have meant that they would have had to have come through that Spacebridge, and she did not like that notion at all. First, she was not certain if it would do to them what had happened to her. Perhaps her state of being was not due to the damage done to the Decepticon Spacebridge, or even her attempt to phase through its walls. Perhaps it was this alien Spacebridge's fault, perhaps it was damaged? Broken? Or perhaps there was some sort of safeguard that was meant to destroy all entities not of a designated species, and she had simply not qualified?

A small voice inside of her told her that those were futile lies and that the pain she suffered and the damage done to her had been her own damn fault. She should not have of attempted to phase out of a Spacebridge in the middle of a Jump. Especially when the SPacebrdige had been damaged in the middle of the fight. How stupid could she have been? Secondly, even if they came for her, would they be able to return the same way? Perhaps that was the plan that Megatron had all along? Maybe the whole thing had been a setup, an attempt to lure the Autobots into the Spacebridge and send them here–to a place of no return? It seemed logical, but it only raised a plethora of unanswered questions. How had Megatron and the Decepticons even located this place, wherever here was? And how had they managed to link the two Spacebridges? Clearly if they had located this place, didn't that mean that they had come and gone through the portal themselves?

Her head was beginning to hurt again.

She knew she could not have both of her desires–the Autobots to save her and at the same time to stay away, and yet it seemed she would have neither.

At this point, a week's worth of suffering at the hands of the unnatural shadows and silence of the place, she was more than happy with the plan to find an escape out.

Having repaired more of the damage to her legs over the last week, Phage was able to muster the ability to stand, albeit she was limping and must have looked like the biomechanical version of a zombie.

Hah.

That mental image tickled her perverse funny bone as she imagined Sideswipe and Sunstreaker playing robo-zombies. The amusement of the idea waned as soon as that mental image morphed into human zombies enhanced with cybernetics. Phage determined that Zombie-Terminator was just scary.

Warily, Phage picked herself off the floor and stumbled to her feet. She favored her right leg strongly, but started out armed with nothing more than a little hand light meant for medical purposes to guide her path…

Then she stopped abruptly as a thought struck her. If the Autobots did show up, how were they to know that this location was the place where she had come through? Or that she had not been kidnapped?

She summoned her laser scalpel from subspace, knelt down and began to carve a short message into the lifeless metal floor. She made sure to write it big, so there was no chance of them missing it –and in English. She figured that English letters carved into the surface of an alien floor would be rather difficult to miss.

Once she had completed her task, she stepped back and studied her work:

_**I was here. **_

_**Ping me.**_

–_**Phage**_

She nodded off on it, thought better, marked an arrow next to it to mark the general direction she was heading, and then gave it her official stamp of approval, which was a devilish Autobot symbol with its tongue sticking out. Actually, that was Sideswipe and Sunstreaker's (un)official seal of approval. She had seen it in their habitation suite one day and had laughed her head off at it. Somehow, between then and her time spent with the Terrible Twins, she had adopted it as her own. If anything, that symbol alone meant that she did not write the message under duress and secondly, it really was her that had wrote it. Few people outside of the three of them…_and– _now that she thought about it, very potentially Optimus Prime, Jazz, and Prowl. She recalled an incident about a year back where Sideswipe had gotten in trouble for 'defacing' the noble Autobot symbol. She hoped Prowl wouldn't punish her for it; she meant it as a joke.

Phage hesitated a moment, debating about scratching it out, then shrugged it off. It was meant as a tease and a sign that she was alive. That was all. She'd have to hope the officers wouldn't take offense. Her consciousness continued to pick at her for hours after about it though.

All in all, it was sort, sweet and simple. In other words, it was perfect.

Phage pressed on.

Finding a way out of the Defiance Chamber, as she came to call it, was easy. It was the mass of derelict tunnels spawning off from it–some flooded with putrid water that she sorely hoped wasn't sewage–that gave her cause to pause, and not the customary pause to mark her direction with an arrow. She had been stumbling around through the lightless maze for near thirty Earth minutes and after stubbing her foot, tripping, and banging into a wall she hadn't seen six feet in front of her for the fifth time–she'd had enough.

And she had an idea.

She stuck the little flashlight between her teeth and started to feel around the walls and overhead for any sort of long stretch of pipe. She counted her blessings when she felt one along the wall, then figured it wasn't so much luck as she was in the right place. Everything was artificial, so she deduced that she _had_ to be in some abandoned facility's underground network–because she sorely did not want to think that she was in the sewers, it would look _so_ much better on her report later if it was an abandoned facility, and not a sewer.

The pipe was partially dislodged from its position, hanging out into the tunnel by a seventy-five degree angle. She attempted once to pull it free, failed and bit back on a shout as she pulled something in her arm.

Phage closed her optics and calmly reminded herself that she was not as strong as she was used to. She had severe internal and external damage. She needed a medic –preferably Ratchet. She had to think of something else…

That something else came in the quickly assessable form of her laser scalpel. She severed the pipe at its base, stashed the scalpel once more and tested the pipe for sturdiness between the grip of her hands. When it held up and did not crumble into rust, she approved of her new toy.

Her plan? A retro-revolutionary idea known simply as echolocation.

Phage mustered a slanted smile.

_Thank you, bats._

She knocked the pipe against the walls and checked the floor for obstacles like a blind person would, using the sensory equipment in her panel wings and valkryie antenna to receive and process the returning echoes into a three-dimensional map of her immediate surroundings.

To her dismay she found that she was at a fork in the road. That realization made her realize that she had probably passed up many others without ever realizing it. She tinkered around a bit, then hobbled over to the right passage, knocked the pipe against the wall and waiting patiently for the rebounding sound waves to hit her. Then did the same for the left. She found that the right tunnel proceeded on a great distance out of range, and the left tunnel had a gradually upwards incline to it.

She chose the left.

Phage proceeded further into the tunnel depths, a smirk plastered on her cracked, tinted lips.

* * *

"What do you mean my niece is dead!?" Sparkplug bellowed from the Medibay floor. "You lot were supposed to be watching her!"

Optimus Prime visibly cringed at the proclamation and squeezed his optics closed as if he'd just been stabbed through his chassis. When he opened them again, he was surprised to find that he had not been. Although Sparkplug's words were directed at Ratchet, who had just delivered the news of Phage's termination, Optimus knew they were really directed at him, not just as the Commander of the Autobots or her friend, but as the one that shared the resonated link with her. How could he have not been watching out for her? How could he have let his feud with Megatron blind him to her actions on the field?

Lying on a medberth in Ratchet's Medibay onboard _The Ark_, Optimus Prime said nothing in response to Sparkplug's shock-fuelled outrage. He was lost and drowning in a turbulent sea that battered him from one emotional extreme to the next: from self-loathing, to grief, then anger and back again. Around and round it went, as he laid prone as the dead itself staring aimlessly up at the ceiling. And if he did break the cycle and breach the skin of the violent storm, he would be caught and towed back down again by ghost signals and memory relapse, to experience Phage's death as if it were his very own again and again. Each time, he suffered as she had suffered; as the Spacebridge ripped apart every molecule of her body, every atom's electrical field stripped as she was blown apart on the most fundamental of levels…

'_Phage you fragging fembot! What were you thinking!? What in the Pitt were you even doing in the Spacebridge! What was in there that was of such tactical importance to the battle that was worth your slagging life?!'_

Prime's anger slipped as Sparkplug's words sank in. Replaced by a sudden self-loathing for insulting her, Optimus cycled a ragged rush of air through his auxiliary intakes, his whole frame shuddering with the effort. Inwardly, as he was torn apart by grief and ghost pain, a single solitary question resounded across his CPU, cutting like a vibro-sword through everything:

'_How could __**I**__ have let it happen?'_

"How?" sharp-edged and throaty, Spike's voice echoed and rose above Prime's own. "How did it happen?"

"According to Optimus, it was the spacebridge." Came Ratchet's gruff response. "She was caught inside when it went off. As far as we could tell, the Spacebridge had been damaged during the fight. It's Wheeljack's assertion that the Jump would have failed. I know I don't need to tell you the rest, Spike."

From his peripheral vision, Prime could see Spike's shocked reaction to the news, Sparkplug's outrage, and Arcee –who had been looking out for the Witwicky family this time around while Bumblebee participated in the battle – was wide-opticed, one slender white iron hand over her gaping mouth. He realized that this was the first time Arcee had ever experienced death, and the notion panged at him deeply.

Prime also took lazy stock of Ratchet as he carefully sorted through his medical instruments on a trolley, organizing them by size and shape from smallest to largest. Unbeknownst to Prime, it was Ratchet's futile attempt to scrub the image of the horrified, wide-eyed looks the Witwicky family gave him at the news, or how Arcee had emitted a strangled cry and promptly covered her mouth with one slim hand. Most of all, his sudden interest in his tools belied his inner process of elimination as he examined over pretty words and great speeches, seeking the right set that would hold the greatest effect for Sparkplug, the all-and-once-blood-and-bone uncle to Phage.

Sparkplug tore his yellow hard-hat from his head and threw it aside, scrubbing ruefully at his mop of salt and pepper hair. He repeated his early question: "What was she doing in the Spacebridge? Why weren't any of you looking out for her?"

"We're not exactly sure what she was doing on the Spacebridge. And putting aside her background," Ratchet began at last, each word carefully measured, "Phage was an exceptional warrior, Sparkplug. She didn't _need_ any '_looking after_.'"

Sparkplug ran his calloused hands over his face and through his crop of receding hair. "She was young! She–"

"By human standards, she was an adult. Fully aware of her actions."

"And by your standards she's–she's what, a baby? An adult? _Shit_. Do your people even measure youth?"

Ratchet hesitated, his optics seeking Sparkplug and Spike far below him. It was the first time he'd looked at them since delivering the news. "Firstly," he stated matter-of-factly, "Transformers don't have babies. Secondly, I don't seem to recall you raising any similar complaints when the Aerialbots were created, or the Dinobots or Arcee, for that matter. By human standards, they would be considered 'babies,' although I should think if you suggested it to any of them they would take offense."

The Aerialbots, who mulled around the Medibay for repairs murmured their agreement. The Dinobots were still in their cave and had been for weeks. Arcee was too busy grappling with her first taste of death to give a response, which saved her breath, as Sparkplug promptly ignored them all.

"Phage is different and you know that."

"Of course I know. She was human before! As her medical officer, it's something I never forget.

"And thirdly, of course we measure youth. Not like humans. But yes. In terms of experience…"

"Then Phage–"

"_**Phage**_," Ratchet cut off, his face twisting unkindly with the volume of his tone, "is an exceptional case. She _always_ has been. She was far wiser than her age and the Core–"

"_Exceptional_." Sparkplug spat the word as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth, "There you go, throwing that word around again as if it justifies everything."

"What else does?" Ratchet fumed, brimming on an all out burst of anger. "How _else_ would you describe her unique situation?" The CMO caught himself and took a half-second to rub the bridge of his olfactory. "It doesn't matter. This conversation is pointless. In terms of age versus experience, the Core, her…it doesn't matter. She's terminated."

"Bullshit." Sparkplug spewed vehemently. "She can regenerate!"

"Could." Ratchet corrected, pointing an accusing finger at the shock-stricken human. "She _could_ regenerate. She hasn't been able to since the Matrix reformatted her from a transorganic to a total biomechanical entity, like the rest of us Transformers."

"Like there's a difference."

"There _is_ a difference!"

"Phage," began Sunstreaker suddenly, "was an Autobot."

All eyes in the Medibay shifted wearily to the Yellow Terror as he pushed himself off from a medberth where Sideswipe sat with a missing left arm. His stance to defend the femme was striking, as the two had never gotten along.

Once he had everyone's attention, he repeated with an air befitting a charismatic commanding officer that was uncharacteristic of the sociopath:

"Phage was an Autobot. She knew the risks every time she rolled out to battle. As a former veteran, you know the risks involved in war too, Sparkplug."

"Shove it up your tailpipe, Sunstreaker. Last thing I need is a lecture from the likes of you!"

In a puff of smoke the illusion of Sunstreaker's rare magnetism evaporated. He came up short from his push off the medberth, his body becoming stiff as he gradually crossed his arms. The corner of his lip components twitched, demanding to be turned into a frown, whilst he struggled not to shower Sparkplug beneath his deathly glare.

Sunstreaker didn't succeed.

Nervous glances shifted from Autobot to Autobot and human to Autobot and back again. But Sunstreaker did not move towards Sparkplug. Sunstreaker was, of all things, not dull in the CPU. One could literally see him plotting retribution through the windows of his optics.

What had promised to be some of Sunstreaker's first inspirational words turned to coal, as his temper blew up and he snapped off, "Some 'bots have talent and others don't, but fewer 'bots have the processing power and talent. Those are the ones that survive to make it to elite."

If Sparkplug had been a Transformer, he would have shot lasers from his optics. "You callin' my niece thick, you tin-plated oversized reflector!"

"Your words. Not mine."

Sparkplug's ears tinged red, followed in hot pursuit by the rest of his face as his mouth moved wordlessly to voice the storm of venomous words attempting to flood out of his throat all at once.

"Dad!" piped up Spike at last, noticing the beat red coloration taking over Sparkplug's face; "Your blood pressure!"

Sparkplug whipped around and thundered at his son, "Shut up, Spike!"

A smooth smile played across Sunstreaker's lip components. "What I am saying is that she made a mistake. And a fraggin' dumb one too! Getting trapped on the damn Spacebridge like that…"

Sunstreaker was not aware of any flying wrenches until one hit him squarely above the brow. The shock of the blow bore him back, his hands seeming to teleport to the place of impact to inspect for damages. His face was awash of surprise, mouth hanging open and optics wide, until he realized what had happened and then his features resumed their dark tones as his optics locked onto the Chief Medical Officer–

-only to discover that Ratchet had seized up, his right arm held high with his wrench clutched firmly in his red iron hand. The CMO's optics were wide and round, his mouth agape in a similar surprise that Sunstreaker had only just held and now held again.

"Make one more remark about Phage, Sunstreaker," rumbled Optimus Prime's baritone voice like promising thunder as he struggled to sit upright on his medberth, "and it'll be more than the damn wrench I throw at your head!"

Sunstreaker was not one to generally back down from a fight, and one of the few Autobots that would often stare down Prime in one of his temperamental moods, but this time Sunstreaker realized he had way overstepped the line.

Uncharacteristically, Sunstreaker bowed his head, uttered a meek apology, and swiftly retreated behind his damaged brother. The notion that he was using him as a shield against Prime's wrath was not lost on anybody in the Medibay. Sideswipe, for his part, glowered down at his twin.

"You're a fraggin' idiot, Sunny." Sideswipe quietly hissed at his brother. "Of all the inconsiderate, warped things to say…"

"Shut. Up." Sunstreaker growled back. "Just. Shut. Up."

Optimus glared after Sunstreaker precious seconds longer before he felt satisfied enough to lay back down. Whether it was the act itself or poor timing was a matter for debate, all Prime knew was that he was suddenly wracked from his databanks to the gears in his feet with excruciating pain, a searing, tearing pain that he knew instinctively to have been Phage's. His body arched, muscle cables tensing while liquid fire raced through his circuitry and his video-fed snowed. Overloaded by the all-too-real ghost signals, Optimus Prime threw his head back and screamed.

Optimus wasn't aware of Ratchet materializing at his side, shouting orders, of the Aerialbots throwing themselves over him and pinning him to the medberth, or of Ratchet injecting something into his neck. Prime wasn't even aware when he slipped into a restless recharge.

"Shit."

"Love your vocabulary, doc." fired off Slingshot as he and Fireflight held Prime's legs down. All his Aerialbot brothers shot him a glare.

Elsewhere, Sparkplug and Spike echoed Ratchet's sentiments, though for another reason. Both the humans held their hands tightly over their ears, pained by Prime's vociferous scream. Cautiously, both son and father removed their hands and looked at each other.

"I've got a gawd-awful ringing in my ears!" Spike said all-too loudly.

"What?" unnecessarily shouted Sparkplug.

Bumblebee turned mother hen and flocked to the two humans at first signs of trouble. Accompanied by an all-too silent and stone-faced Arcee, they gently nudged their human allies out of Medibay.

Simultaneously, Silverbolt rolled his optics to Slingshot's remark, shook his head and looked up at Ratchet from where he laid over Prime's mid-section. "What's wrong with Optimus?"

"Not Optimus, Phage." Ratchet tartly supplied as he retracted the syringe from Prime's neck and stepped back, looking ashen for his white fleximetal face. "Ghost signals." He supplied further at their confusion. His optics jumped to the Aerialbots then, and remarked, "You all know them."

Although they were not joined on any mental level while separated as their own individuals, each of the five Aerialbots simultaneously pulled an all-too-knowing face that shadowed a certain unease amongst them that said that they did know all-too-well what he meant.

Ratchet hardly hesitated, but Prime's reaction had shaken even him. The Autobot Commander was not one that emitted any kind of emotion easily, even pain. Over the course of the war, Ratchet had seen Optimus steadily but surely stifle any and all of his emotions, hiding them away someplace deep and someplace well fortified within himself. Reflecting back, Ratchet could not rightly recall when last he had heard Prime scream like that…

Ratchet gave his head a mental shake of such morbid thoughts and looked over his shoulder strut. "Wheeljack!" he shouted, "Bring me the Block!"

He shouldn't have been surprised to find that Wheeljack was already approaching him with the device, but it did. He hadn't know Wheeljack to move so quickly in robot form. But Ratchet counted Wheeljack's hindsight and set to work, shooing the Aerialbots off of their medicated leader. In mute communication, playing off of each other from millions of years foreknowledge, Ratchet and Wheeljack prepped and readied Optimus Prime for an emergency operation.

An uneasy air of trepidation pervaded the Medibay. But more than that, the blow done to morale was agonizingly palpable. It was a long while before anybody spoke…


End file.
